"When I finished the infographic and showed it to my wife, she said: “Forty years? No way. Four, maybe.”

“Four, maybe” – it’s what most people think. Most people are still convinced that e-books are a fad. That’s why I was looking for a convenient, all-in-one way to challenge this myth. I hope it works. Every year shows not only the information about e-books, but also other facts and achievements. This builds a good, thought-provoking time reference."

"He also questions why his app is the only one to have Google single it out in this manner; there are a number of other free apps that also provide premium services or sell outside the app and do not use Google Checkout for payment processing. For example, the Kindle and Nook e-book reader applications certainly don’t use Google Checkout.

All that Google had to say in response to GigaOm is that “We remove applications from Android Market that violate our terms of service.” Nice to know that not only Apple can be laconic and capricious."

Friday, February 25, 2011

"But what does a pirate’s reading really list really look like today? It doesn’t mirror Kindle or Nook’s top selling books. In fact, GalleyCat made a list of the Top 10 Pirated eBooks at The Pirate Bay, and it’s a weird list. Galley Cat reports: “As you can see by the list below (titles, but no links!), the most popular books aren’t the titles you might expect…"

You're looking in the wrong place. Larsson, Rowling, and much of the Times top Ten are out there. All of the Sci-fi and Romance market is well represented but you won't usually find them on the Torrents.

"What about using Google, instead of Apple? Publishers I have talked to believe the tablet is likely to be the dominant device for reading digital content, and Apple has a very big early lead. That installed base of tablets, the iTunes store and the more than 100 million credit cards already signed in makes it a market that will be too big for many to ignore … even as they complain about the economics."

Just as we saw Android take the phone market by storm, we are likely to see a drastic change in the tablet market. Let Apple develop the market for the tablet. Chinese tablets will then come along and take over.

Three stories are occupying my techie RSS feeds these days, and they are all alarming ones.1) The Borders/Red Group Closures2) The Hot Mess That is the Apple In-App Purchasing Fiasco3) The Broadband Spectrum and Usage-Based Billing

This can be a watershed year for the internet. Are we going to see more rights and freedoms and growing online social connections or are we going to see a class system and the Balkanization of the internet.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

"Paramount Pictures has acquired screen rights to the John Scalzi novel series Old Man’s War, with Wolfgang Petersen attached to direct and David Self adapting the tale into a large-scale science fiction project. Scott Stuber will produce through his Stuber Pictures banner, with Petersen also producing."

Are we talking about the next Avatar (Green skin instead of blue)? The budget will make or break this concept.

"Those of you in the UK can find a great bargain on an e-ink e-reader. Normally listed at £139 (currently $225.64), the Binatone ReadMe Classic is on sale for £29.99 ($48.69) at UK electronics chain Makro. That’s the cheapest any e-ink e-book reader has been that I can think of, especially in the UK where things tend to cost more than in the US."

"Here’s the kicker: Rather than there just being one copy of that famous person’s notes, why not offer them for sale to anyone else who buys the ebook? I’d pay more to see Bill Gates’ notes on some of the books I’ve read. The idea is for thought leaders, celebrities, etc., to make handwritten notes in ebooks they read and sell them as an add-on. Like most rich/famous people, Bill doesn’t need the money, so he could donate it to his Foundation if he chooses to. There would be two versions of the ebook available: One without notes at the current (lower) price and one with the VIP notes at a slightly higher price."

A good idea so far as thinking as a way of monetizing margin notes. Of course people with no name recognition but intelligence, wit, and time on their hands could be building the best sets of margin notes. These people need to find a way to get a piece of the margin notes money.

"And here is where the e-book comparison comes in, because we’ve heard many complaints about the shoddy quality of editorial proofing for commercial e-books, notably Kindle editions. In some cases it seems as if they were simply put through an OCR script and then posted the way they were. But on the other hand, a lot of pirate scanned e-books have been painstakingly proofread and corrected by the scanners, or by people who got them after the scanners released them. You commonly see “version” notifications on some of the more popular titles, indicating how many times the files have been revised. After all, pirated e-books are released in digital, editable formats, and many people take the time to do just that."

Friday, February 18, 2011

"Geometer, one of the developers of FBReader, has just announced a new update to the Android version of this popular reading app.

FBReader is an open source reading app that runs on may different devices and reads many different formats. Device support includes Windows, Android, Linux, Nokia Internet tablets, and the iRex Iliad & Digital Readers. Note: the Android app only supports oeb, epub, and fb2 at this time."

"I admit that I bought my iPad for the wrong reasons. I got one because it seemed like everyone I knew had gotten one for Christmas and, well, I felt left out. I didn't think about how it would fit in with the gadgets I already owned (laptop, Kindle, iPhone), and I didn't borrow a friend's and take it on a test drive. Now I just feel annoyed, having spent $600 on a device that hasn't done anything to improve my life. A salad spinner would have been a better investment, and I don't even eat that much salad."

Thursday, February 17, 2011

"There are a few reasons while CE manufacturers are so cautious. First, Apple has the tablet component market sewn up. An entrepreneur I talked to in China described the difficulty he still has buying touchscreens that are worth a darn. The real reason most of the current tablets are 7 inches? Because Apple bought up all of the 10-inch capacitive touchscreen stock and if they didn’t then they drove the price too high for smaller orders. There is no way to dabble in the market without paying a premium."

"The App Store isn’t a storefront in the way that Amazon.com or Walmart are — this isn’t just an extravagant affiliate fee. We’re talking about the primary method of app distribution for one of the most important computer operating systems, ever. iOS is still in its infancy, and is going to continue to permeate across Apple products: desktop PCs, laptops, televisions, and whatever else Cupertino cooks up. And as people grow up in households where iOS is computing, it’s going to become harder than ever to get them to switch to less restrictive platforms down the road. Even when, heaven forbid, Apple starts making products that simply aren’t as good as the competition, or publishers and developers try to move to a different platform."

"So instead of sharing a next review, analysis or opinion, I’ve created a simple questionnaire which can help you define your own reading preferences. ...If you’ve chosen answer “A” more than 6 times, you’ll feel better with an e-reader. It’s a great device to help you focus on reading for long hours.More than 6 picks for “B” means, that you may prefer a tablet. It’s a versatile device with a full multimedia support, which can be used by all members of your family for different purposes."

"Wha? The? F? Margaret must be on a hellava contract, and given her popularity that is probably the case. But to generalise that “authors” make less on ebooks that their pbooks through major publishers is just whacked. Not to mention the moose references."

Monday, February 14, 2011

"The Canadian discount chain Zellers are how selling an Android tablet. The Epad CMP 738a has a 7″ (800�480) screen, microSD card slot, Wifi, speaker, microphone, and an accelerometer. It’s running Android v2.1 on a 700MHz dual core CPU."

I'm tempted to lace up my boots and get over to Zellers ASAP. After looking at the Slatedroid posts I think I'll wait a bit. First off there is no mention of the battery capacity: I'd rather have a 4200mA battery with 4-8 hours of use than a 1500mA battery with 90 min of use. User comments will settle that score.The picture in the attached PDF looks a bit familiar. It might be a variant of the Apad 710 Rockchip 600MHz android 2.1 found at merimobiles.com.

"Anyone who watches sports, movies or even A&E knows that tattoos have gone mainstream. Studies have shown that as many as one in every 2.5 adults under 40 has one, so if you don't, someone in a nearby cubicle probably does. This surge in popularity has gained momentum since the 1970s, when painters-turned-tattooists brought fine arts sensibilities and limitless options. With more choices comes more pre-ink homework, so here are some things to consider before getting stuck"

Awesome infographic with rollover magnifying glass.
I am ink free and not particularly impressed with people who choose to mark up their body. This overview of tattoos is as close as I've come to considering, possibly, the remote likelihood of getting something done.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

"The Jetbook Lite retails anywhere between $99 and $170 and if you decide to pick one up you are getting a solid device for your money. We recommend this one to people who are independent and tech savvy enough to be able to locate books on your own, without being locked into a specific ebook store. If you are interested in purchasing the Jetbook Lite, check out our retail partner Shop e-Readers! They ship all over the world at cheap affordable prices."

"I’ve wanted to see one of these machines up close for a while now, but I had no idea that a local indie bookstore had one. So I finished my coffee, hopped on the subway, and went to buy myself a print-on-demand book."

"With Public Notes, now a noted public figure of an opposing political bent can read and annotate a Kindle edition of a new book by someone on the other side of the argument, and the reading public can tune into that person’s highlights and notes from within the original text.

It’s a virtual annotated edition, and one that only exists temporarily. The author of the notes can remove them or disable public access to them at any time, or a reader can choose not to follow their annotations the same way I don’t follow certain celebs on Twitter."

"In January Google purchased E-Book Technologies, a company that sells software used to operate digital reading devices, along with related publishing tools. Neither Google nor eBook said how much the search engine giant paid for the company. What the company had that Google primarily wanted was the patents it owned."

Friday, February 11, 2011

"I once asked Haggis about the future of his relationship with Scientology. “These people have long memories,” he told me. “My bet is that, within two years, you’re going to read something about me in a scandal that looks like it has nothing to do with the church.” He thought for a moment, then said, “I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.”"

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

"Good Omens To Be Made Into a Four-Part TV Series
Just in case you weren’t tuned into SFX’s Twitter feed this week while the SFX Weekender 2 was taking place, two bits of news were announced at the event. First up, Terry Pratchett revealed that his legendary 1990 book collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Good Omens, is set to be made into a four-part TV series. Although he revealed no other details, www.terry-jones.net is saying that the ex-Python and former BBC journalist-turned-scriptwriter Gavin (The Borrowers) Scott are “in talks” to write the script."

"After following her publisher’s advice led to declining sales, Valdez has decided to go it alone. She has “incredibly loyal” fans, and if she can produce and self-publish a book on her own, she will keep considerably more money from each copy sold than St. Martin’s Press would have given her. She knows people who can do the editing work, and feels she could assemble a perfectly serviceable cover from licensed stock photography. And she was already doing the bulk of the publicity for the book herself."

Just as porn drove the advances on the internet, Harlequin romance type books will drive the future of long form publishing.

"Free software advocate Benjamin Mako Hill's lecture on 'Antifeatures' for the Free Technology Academy is a fascinating look at the ubiquitous 'antifeature' -- that is, a deliberately designed product feature that none of the product's users desire. Examples include cameras that block saving images as RAW files, phones that are designed to identify and drain third-party batteries, and, of course, printers that are designed to reject third-party ink.

Mako makes a compelling case that these sorts of features are endemic to proprietary technology, and that free and open technology are the antidote to them."

Directed by "Superbad's" Greg Mottola, the film also features Kristen Wiig, Jason Bateman and Sigourney Weaver.There are so many references to science-fiction films and comic book characters in Universal’s affectionate, funny and action-packed sci-fi spoof Paul that there should be a prize for anyone who gets them all.
Simon Pegg, who teamed with Edgar Wright to write the wonderful zombie spoof Shaun of the Dead and the much admired shoot ’em up horror lark Hot Fuzz, here partners with co-star Nick Frost to script a comedy creature feature that hits home with wit, invention and flare."

"The clip is as wide as the light, so it grabs onto the device firmly, and doesn't wiggle. Because there are 3 LEDs, it is quite bright, but the light is even across the whole screen, from top to bottom. Because you can adjust the angle of the light, you can avoid hotspots pretty easily. There is just the slightest hotspot at the very top, usually in the title bar, not over actual text. It is a bit overpowering in a dark room, so I may add a piece of Scotch tape over the LED section."

OK, now I may re-think my prejudice against e-ink readers because I can't read them in a dark room. Then again, clip-ons are kind of a pain to keep track of and keep recharged.

"A pair of pieces on piracy and e-books caught my eye. One is a blog post by literary agent Nicholas Croce, on fighting piracy with e-book ads. Croce thinks that ads could work financially, in ways that were not possible before. They could be digitally updated to remain current, and be customized to reader demographics. And by being financially relevant, they could lower the cost of e-books to the point where piracy becomes less attractive."

This never works. Its always a "cake and eat it too" scenario. They'll just boost book prices and include animated, bandwidth grabbing, advertisements in the books.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Del Toro had gone on a quest, but he came home with no treasure. The triumph of “Pan’s Labyrinth” was now five years old. He needed a comeback project. In Wellington, he hadn’t been able to film the proof-of-concept video for “Frankenstein.” That could be next. But he was thinking of taking an even bigger risk, and pursuing the adaptation of Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”—his “Sisyphean project.” He had begun sketching images for an adaptation in 1993 and had completed a script in 1998. But the project had seemed too daunting; digital effects weren’t yet good enough to render creatures that changed shape far more radically than Transformers. Then, while del Toro was in Wellington, “Avatar” was released, and its landmark effects made “Madness” seem plausible. Crucially, James Cameron, a friend, had agreed to be a producer for “Madness,” sharing his expertise in designing strange worlds.

Also gossip about The Hobbit and del Toro's vision for a new Frankenstein.

"But I’m proud to announce that Prism Durosport will soon re-release the Smell of Books line and they even sent me a sample of their new scent, Olde English Parlour. I hadn’t realized how I appreciated the smell of tobacco smoke from an old pipe. The smell really does add something to my reading experience."

Problem solved. Get a nice leather cover for your e-reader to fondle and spray this wherever you are reading. It can only improve the atmosphere on the bus.

"There seems to be a loophole that a number of folks have stumbled across to get a brand new Nook Color for roughly half price or even less. This would apply to the regular E Ink Nook as well and other merchandise from Barnes and Noble."

Friday, February 4, 2011

"NoteSlate is low cost tablet device with true one colour display, real paper look design, long life battery (180h !), together with very handy usage and very simple and helpful interface for pen and paper. This easy, compact and portable gadget is used anywhere you want to make any notes, drafts, sketches, any ideas for future reference. Paper for everyone! Write a note and check it later, save it, or delete it. Maybe send it after. Just one colour is enough to express the basics. Keep your life simple. You will love it. For $99."

"One of the longstanding promises of the Internet--of the last century's worth of technology, really--is that the cultural heritage of the world will be accessible to everyone in their homes. Today, the global museum has taken another step forward with Google Art Project. An ingenious application of Google's Street View and Picasa tools, it allows web browsers to wander the halls of 17 museums around the world (New York City's MoMA, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and others)."

"Additional features include publisher lists, links to recent and upcoming books, and magazine lists. By looking over their author birthday listing, I even discovered that Alice Cooper, one of my favorite rockers, is also a speculative fiction author. Who knew?"

Thursday, February 3, 2011

"This is how they sent a single order for CMOS batteries. So yes, it's an improvement.. although sending 65 screws in 65 padded envelopes inside a single box seems even more stupid than sending all those separates box. Didn't the guy packing that thought that maybe it would be better to use one single envelope? I really want to meet the people taking these decisions."

"Assuming an inflated cost of 10 cents per gigabyte, it means that Bell, Shaw and Rogers are charging consumers between 10 and 50 times what it costs them to deliver data. This on top of their regular monthly Internet pricing! While I agree that heavy users should be prepared to pay more once they have reached their bandwidth caps, a fair price would be much closer to 10 cents per GB than the inflated $1-to-$5-per-gigabyte charge sanctioned by the CRTC.

The vast mark-up granted to cable and telecommunications under UBB by the CRTC demonstrates that the federal regulator has failed to deliver a competitive Internet services business in Canada. Rather than ensuring consumers receive fair Internet pricing, the CRTC seems content to line the pockets of Cable and telecommunications companies by forcing Canadian consumers to pay Internet data rates that have no basis in reality."

Maybe Harper and Clement's recent public association with this issue will shame the CRTC into doing its job: regulating the communications industry to the benefit of all of Canada.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

"This is one of the not quite so noticeable changes Google made today: they opened the Android Market – to everyone, no matter whether you have an authorized device. Google have loosened their grip on Android. (This development is particularly delicious considering that it comes only days after Apple tightened their grip on iOS.)"

"Random House and Overdrive announced a new distribution agreement today. In the near future, participating libraries in Canada will be able to buy and loan ebooks published by Random House of Canada.Um, why are we just now seeing this announcement in 2011? It’s hard to believe that this one of the big 6 publishers, and it took them this long to get their ebooks into libraries."

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper is taking the unusual step of intervening in an ever mounting controversy over Internet billing.

Mr. Harper on Tuesday put more heft behind Industry Minister Tony Clement’s decision to launch a probe of a regulatory decision that raises the cost of Internet service, announcing he, too, is second-guessing the ruling."

The government needs to put Canada back in the game. The more Bell and Rogers profit from controlling the internet the more likely that Canada will lose the ability to participate in the worldwide information economy.Of course it may just be some attention grabbing in anticipation of the upcoming election. "Harper cares about the Canada's future."

With Apple’s iBooks offering still struggling, and getting smashed by Amazon on catalogue range (even more so if you live outside the US) and probably sales, on one level it would make commercial sense for Apple to start trying to drive ebook purchases through iTunes. Otherwise others profit from the strength of Apple’s ecosystem, without Apple getting a cut.

But when looking at the “big picture” enforcing this is a ridiculously bad idea for the following reasons:

A.Apple paints itself as the big, bad corporation, and gets in a fight with everyone. It’s already a PR disaster.
B.The more they enforce their rules, the more they remind everyone that they are running a very closed ecosystem that can change on a dime, and the more they drive people to Android.

"Tim Spalding, creator of Librarything thinks that all of this will devalue books in general. “The process is gradual. Mental models change slower than technology. If the Kindle had debuted with an access-based ‘faucet’ model, it would have failed. Consumers would not have traded true ownership for a tethered, metered and monitored product. But we’ll get there soon enough, as each step away from ownership makes the next step more acceptable. Once you realise your Kindle book is not fully yours, you’ll accept it being mostly not yours. Google Ebooks are a further step away from ownership. Eventually you get to a faucet model, as music has done, either low-price (Netflix) or free (Pandora, YouTube)."

"New Usage-Based Billing (UBB) rules in Canada mean that indie ISPs are already slashing data caps from 200GB per month down to a mere 25GB. In response, Reddit users suggested a 'Not Safe for Canada' badge that warns Canadian Internet users away from all large files. For those with small caps, this isn't a bad idea—and we asked our creative director Aurich to mock one up."

"I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me those of the Big 6 publishers who have been playing the price-fixing Agency Model racket have left themselves wide open for class-action lawsuits if their “agents” go out of business and lose the eBooks of their customers."

"Yet despite the obvious anger over the issue, there remains a considerable amount of misinformation about what has happened and uncertainty about just what to do about it. This post attempts to unpack the issue, by discussing two related but not identical concerns - the recent CRTC UBB decision and the broader use of bandwidth caps by virtually all large Canadian ISPs."